from the rest of the flock? I'd like to give our 4wk, going on 5 wk broody some day old chicks to adopt. How long would I keep her and her little ones separate from the rest of the flock? And would it be better to integrate "momma hen" back into the flock after say 4wks while keeping the young'ns separate until they are point of lay? Thanks for advice!

I'm not any kind of expert on this, but when I separated momma and chicks from the rest of the group it only lasted about a week or two because once I let them free-range, then momma wanted to take them back into the big henhouse. She kept her chicks with her in a nest box though, rather than the roost where the other hens slept.

I think the week or two of separation was important because she was a first time mother and seemed to be low on the pecking order anyways so it took her awhile to get used to being a mother.

My sister just had a broody that hatched one chick...she turned them right out, I don't know why. All the other hens are picking on the chick and all the hen gets done is protecting it. She can't watch it 24/7 and I imagine it will get injured or killed. I don't know why she does some of the things she does! The list is long and varied but suffice to say that her farm managing and animal husbandry skills are nil, nada, zip...her good new laying hens are now the new buffet to all the predators in the area and she isn't doing a thing about it. She lets sick and injured animals lay and suffer because she "can't stand to kill it". Burns my bippy! un

If I understood your post wrong, I apologize...
Can you take the chick? Or at least, ask you sister to put it in a separate pen until its old enough to fend for itself (3 months?). It is cruel to have a whole henhouse pecking at a tiny chick.

Thanks Chickenannie and Bee,
I do plan on keeping mom and chicks separate for at least a few weeks. I think I will integrate mom back in w/hens after a few weeks and integrate her babies in w/ my new brooder peeps once brooder peeps are old enough to go outside. They will only be a few weeks apart in age plus will give enough time to be sure everyone is hale and hearty.
Sorry to hear about your sis's farm m. skills, Bee. Have you talked to her? How about intro. her to BYC? Maybe she would listen to others without the familial thing going? Works sometimes.

Trust me, I've tried to reason with these folks, they know everything and noone else knows anything! And she is so far up the SPCA's proverbial booty that she gets folks in trouble all the time about their animals! No kidding. She is letting a calf with bloat lay and suffer right now that hasn't been on it's feet for 2 wks, says her husband won't help her kill it. She let an old milk cow with arthritis get bred by her big bull. After the calf arrived the cow could hardly stand and just could barely stumble around. I begged her to kill it and she said, "Oh, she just has a little arthritis." I told her it looked like some neural damage had been done. The cow died before that calf was weaned. She has a sheep with a prolapsed vagina that she won't see to. She found one of her sheep had died in lambing but, by the time she found her, the animals had already eaten her eyes! Her horses that she adopted through the SPCA had rain rot so bad they looked like a quilt. I could tell you pages of this kind of stuff. As long as she is in tight with the animal shelter folks, she can get by with murder. She has about 13 dogs that can't run outside as they kill the chickens, so about 6 are in a small kennel, one is chained on a run with a logging chain (beagle) and the others have to stay in the house and only get let out to use the bathroom or go in the car somewhere else. She once told me I didn't deserve to have dogs because I couldn't take them to the vet every month. I only take my dogs to the vet for shots and when they need to go, but that makes me negligent in some way. They have an enormous yard of green grass, heated water bucket, warm dog houses with memory foam beds and they are not fat as ticks like all of hers. They are happy and healthy and not having to trample on mud and each others feces all the time, as hers do. They aren't tied by the neck to a house either. Trust me, I haven't even started to tell about the worst stuff. The pigs, the sheep, the chickens, turkeys, goats, horses, dogs, cats.....the stories go on and on. I can't do a thing about it. The chickens I did get from her think they are in heaven!

I hear your pain, beekissed. Animal cruelty happens a lot unfortunately, and sometimes the people will defend their behavior to the end. It's terrible, and hearing what you describe makes me feel ill.

I have an issue with a nearby neighbor where the family keeps buying horses but is not feeding them enough. There are 4 horses now in 6-acre pasture that has been eaten down to the dirt for the past 2 years. The horses are eating tree branches and roots and are thin thin thin. We keep telling them to feed them more, but they just don't seem to respond in any way. they seem to think that just because the horses have pasture space they will be fine. They feed bales of hay erratically and grain erratically too, so they keep the horses going on that. Last year they bred the poorest of the horses! gasp and it had a filly. And this week I saw they had put jumps out to jump the poor things. The people are very nice -- how do you get them to understand they are starving the horses -- even when you say it to them directly they don't make any changes??

Maybe you could take pictures and turn them in without stating WHO it is...and after they're all done gasping and complaining about the treatment of the poor animals, THEN tell them who it is. Will be hard to make excuses or defend it then.